Incentives Are Not A Panacea

In the past several years, numerous states, including North Carolina, have offered incentives ranging from hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars in order to lure large corporations. While free market purists denounce incentives as government intrusion into the free market, most states have embraced incentives in order to remain competitive with other states.

North Carolina has continually refined its incentives policy so that it can provide magnanimous packages to large corporations while making those incentives contingent upon the actual employment of thousands of people....